EXPLAINER

FBI says ex-CIA official David Rush repeatedly lied about his credentials in US government job applications.

A former senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official has been accused of criminal theft of public money after hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40m were found hidden in his home.

David Rush, the former official, was arrested on May 19, according to a joint statement released by the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Following an internal investigation within the CIA, which identified potential violations of the law, they said, the agency’s director John Ratcliffe referred the case to the FBI.

Rush is currently being held in jail, awaiting a detention hearing on Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

Who is David Rush?

In an FBI affidavit filed on May 20, Rush is described as a “former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency” who had top secret clearance and access to classified information. It is unclear what position he held in the CIA.

The affidavit asserts that from 2009 to May 2026, Rush knowingly embezzled valuables belonging to the US government.

According to the affidavit, Rush enlisted in the US Navy in 1997. In 2004, he submitted a transcript from South Carolina’s Clemson University, on the basis of which the Navy commissioned him as an officer in the US Navy Reserves.

In February 2015, Rush was honourably discharged from the Navy Reserves with the rank of lieutenant. There is no record of him serving in any branch of the US military after that date.

But US government records indicate that after February 2015, Rush claimed 744 hours of military leave, most recently in September 2025. This military leave amounted to about $77,000 in compensation.

On or around September last year, Rush told US government services that he was in the Navy Reserves, serving as a captain, which is a higher rank than lieutenant, the affidavit states.

The affidavit further adds that Rush repeatedly lied about his education and military credentials in multiple US government job applications, claiming he had degrees from Clemson University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and that he was a navy pilot. Investigators found no records that Rush ever studied at those institutions, or was a pilot or test pilot.

From November 2025 to March 2026, Rush requested and received a “significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses” from the US government, the affidavit states.

When the CIA carried out its investigation, it “was unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency”, according to the court documents. Nor was it able to find “any record of Rush providing information to his employer regarding the disposition of the currency or gold bars that he received for work-related purposes”.

On May 18, FBI officials searched Rush’s home and found about 303 gold bars, worth more than $40m. A single gold bar weighs about 1kg. They additionally found about $2m in US currency and 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes.

Why are gold bars involved in all this?

Most of the US government’s gold is held as official reserves, mainly by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. This is because gold is a durable, universally recognised store of value outside the banking system. Hence, it is useful in crises or wartime, when normal financial channels might break down.

In some intelligence or military operations, however, gold can be used to make covert payments in environments where local banking is unreliable or where the US does not want a traceable wire or bank trail.

This has fuelled long‑running theories that the CIA has used gold as a kind of “slush fund” for covert or even illegal activities.

In their 2003 book, Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave wrote that the CIA used billions of dollars worth of gold found hidden in Japanese tunnels in the Philippines during the second world war to fund operations against the Soviet Union.

Have other governments used gold to make payments like this?

Western countries have alleged that the Russian state-linked Wagner Group of mercenaries has used complex networks to smuggle gold.

A British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report published in 2023 found that the Russian Wagner Group of mercenaries has entered into agreements with countries in Africa to provide security and military support in exchange for access to countries’ mineral resources, such as gold.

The UK report stated that the Wagner group enters such deals with countries including the Central African Republic, Mali and Sudan.

The report alleged that this model generates significant “off‑the‑books” revenue for Moscow.